[Oe List ...] "Twilight edition"

[David Dunn]

Hello Friends,

I visited Terry this evening and have just finished typing his last
'Tidbits' email newsletter. Some of you will already have received it. It's
pasted below.

Terry is beginning to wrap up his affairs. He apologized to me for an old
trespass, long forgotten. I wept and thanked him from the bottom of my
heart. As you see, he has also taken it upon himself to let go of further
obligation to write any more 'Tidbits.'

His own words say it simply: "It has been a long time coming, a long work,
to achieve a solitary life that works..."

I'll share news of his journey.

David Dunn

_______Terry wrote over the last several days:

Welcome!
 
This is the last of the Tidbit series and the beginning of its absence among
us.
 
Thank you for a wonderful journey together. Here are a couple of thoughts I
jotted down on the first day of hospice. And some reflections on a man named
Robert I met later.
 
November 5, 2005
Lakewood, Colorado
 
It has been an unwelcome gift filled with shock and pain. Confrontation with
reality the protest and anger slipping aside as the sniff of truth weighs in
and I am overcome with wonder at how things develop. This was not the plan!
Yet it is the path life has chosen for me and I¹d just as well say yes and
turn to living it in the now.
 
It has been a long time coming, a long work, to achieve a solitary life that
works, a lovely place to live, outgrowing adolescent claims and desires,
lingering over hopes long dead, being friends now with the ones that are
present, expanding my self to fill the universe each day, sharing the wisdom
that results. Humbled by the response.
 
What chorus of angels is it I hear singing life in secular voice? The depths
have always been sung. Yet it has been so hard to peel aside the shell, leaf
by leaf, to discern those depths, to soak in their essence and reshape them
with my own life--to set aside my beliefs, my preferences, my stakes, my
fears, my doubts. A long series of epiphanies, small puffs of white smoke
along the way.
 
******
 
Saturday, November 5, ¹05, 1:45 a.m.
 
Robert, a large black man who works here as a technical assistant to the
nurses, wheeled me out to the smoking porch. Barbara calls it ³smoking
without guilt.²
 
There is a large group in the lounge, mourning the loss of a brother. They
mill around slowly, touching, hugging, praying, being together. Palpable
presence of passing. Undeniable loss and its introspection. Yet a radiance
among them like a glow in the room. It seems as though I have created the
presence for them, yet it know it is not I but spirit, circulating like a
mist among us, touching dried out souls with blood and viscera, moisture
that leaves a last fact among our multitude of imaginations and fantasies.
Anchor to earth and universe, and to the touch of God.
 
Robert is gone, taking a poetry book with him to read in his days off. He is
practically illiterate, but reads haltingly and grasps the meaning
intuitively, talks with me about it, brightens noticeably as the meaning
bursts through and is set by my affirmation. One poem led him to Einstein
and relativity and he was deeply pleased with himself as he talked on about
the relationship and its significance in his world‹very grass-roots in his
comments. He really got his mind around it and a real thrill for me to see
it happen: it is the purpose of my writing and a validation of my methods.
 
6 a.m. Saturday and eight cigarettes later, coming inside to warmth and
breakfast and my roommate shitting in his bed. G¹night! God bless.
 
Not much more to say; not much assurance of time left to say it. But I can
sense an ending to this glorious embodiment of spirit I call my life. May
you know it also and embrace it in union with your own.
 
That¹s it. Grace and Peace. tcw
 
+++++++++++++
 
 
"Whoever you areŠthe world offers itself to your imaginationŠ"
                                   ‹Mary Oliver, poet